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At Transport Logistic 2025, the international exhibition for logistics, mobility, IT, and supply chain management that concluded Thursday in Munich, one of the eye-catching innovations was Spot, a yellow robot dog.
Originally developed by Boston Dynamics, it has been adapted by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) for use in air cargo operations.
“Spot has been trained using artificial intelligence to detect specific pallets that are chaotically arranged in air cargo warehouses.” Manuel Wehner, a researcher at Fraunhofer IML, told Xinhua. “Once it detects the target pallets, it deploys its robotic arm to scan and read the barcode, and then forwards the information to a centralized control system.”
Though Spot doesn’t do the picking, it enables other robots to handle the actual transport by locating cargo efficiently. Wehner said that AI in this system supports three main functions: recognizing cargo patterns, optimizing robot fleet operations, and enabling predictive warehouse management.
Spot’s role reflects a broader transformation underway in the logistics sector. AI is reshaping warehouse automation, route optimization, and dispatching.
A recent survey by Messe Muenchen GmbH, the organizer of the four-day exhibition, revealed that around 54 percent of this year’s exhibitors have adopted AI, mainly in administration, customer service, and controlling. In Germany, two-thirds of respondents have reported using AI to some extent.
Martin Friedrich, another Fraunhofer IML researcher, emphasized the value of AI in managing complexity in fast-paced logistics environments. Applications like capacity forecasting, automated dispatching, and predictive maintenance are already proving beneficial.
However, despite the expanding role of AI in the logistics sector, 60 percent of those surveyed by Messe Muenchen GmbH still cited human expertise as the most critical factor for success.
“At the end, it’s all about human beings, as logistics is a people’s business,” said Robert Schoenberger, the global industry lead at Messe Muenchen GmbH, during an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Matthias Klump, associate professor at Politecnico di Milano also noted “Humans are not being replaced, but complemented.”
In his presentation at the event, Klump highlighted that the trend is clearly moving towards Industry 5.0, a model that focuses not solely on technology-centered digitization but on the symbiotic collaboration between humans and machines.
AI offers data-driven insights, identifies risks, and makes processes more efficient, while humans remain the ultimate decision-makers, Klump stated.
This human-centered approach was also evident in current logistics operations. “We now have control centers where a single human operator supervises an entire robot fleet, intervening only when necessary,” said Wehner. This model of human oversight, paired with multi-robot collaboration, is being seen as the way forward, balancing efficiency with safety.
Still, challenges remain. Friedrich pointed out that the industry continues to grapple with issues such as poor data quality, limited internal expertise, and a lack of acceptance among teams.
Involving employees early in development helps reduce fear and foster acceptance, Klump added.
